Authors: Nicole Williams
I watched the last flood of yellow light inside Charles’ house extinguish before I worked up the nerve to come out from my hiding spot beneath one of the combines on the farm. The same combine William and I used to sneak away to so we could be alone. The same combine where only a month ago he’d begged me in between our parted lips to leave with him. If I’d listened, lord only knows where we’d be, but we’d have been together and he would have been vertical.
I crouched as I ran towards the house, hearing a neigh of welcome as I passed the barn. I’d already said good-bye to the precocious filly William had given me several months earlier and it hadn’t been easy. She’d looked at me with liquid brown eyes as if to say,
Why are you leaving me? What did I do?
That good-bye had been hard enough and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the next one, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I could say good-bye and he could live, sure to find happiness one day in the arms of another woman, or I could stay behind and end up killing him. It should have been an easy decision, but it had been the hardest I’d made to date.
I sprinted across the yard and hugged the east side of the house, side-stepping my way until I was beside his window.
Sometime after I’d awakened in the arena hours ago and realized it hadn’t all been just a bad dream, a layer of numbness had crept through my body, entombing it in a balm of nothingness. It was my only defense mechanism to protect me from having a total breakdown when I faced the fact I’d have to leave—I’d never be able to see him again after tonight.
I sucked in a breath, praying it would get me through these last moments I’d ever have with him. I slid open the window and ghosted in through the sheer panels until I was standing beside him.
The motionless, expressionless form of William would have dropped me to my knees had I not been stiff from the numbness. The pale moonlight diffused through the curtains, casting its spell on his face, and had it not been for the rise and fall of his chest, he could have been a corpse.
I felt a sob explode from my throat, but it was caught and stifled by the numbness before it reached my mouth. I took a rigid step towards him, reaching my hand out to brush the long tufts of hair covering his forehead, but stopped short just inches from his face, remembering what the last touch from me had done to him.
His near lifeless form before me was all the reprimand I needed. I withdrew my hand, having to come to terms that, along with my goodbye, I’d have to settle for our last intimate touch to have been shared last night. I bit my lip, wishing the numbness could have been more encompassing. I would have preferred to have been run over a hundred times by the rotary tiller the tractor pulled than to experience the pain that was shredding me at present.
More than anything, I wanted to be with William. I didn’t want to leave him . . . but I also knew this was the selfish piece of me that I couldn’t seem to bury. All the other pieces of me wanted him safe and since I knew without a sliver of a doubt he would never be safe if he was anywhere within a thousand mile radius of me, this was the only answer. I had to leave.
To vanish as if I’d never entered his life and turned it upside down. The woman he’d dreamed of for generations was not me.
His body suddenly jerked, as if able to hear my dark thoughts. I wanted to press my lips to his and have him suffocate away every worry, until he’d injected enough wistfulness that I felt nothing but him in my drug-induced state. I didn’t stand a chance against the persuasiveness of his lips. His mouth parted and his breathing became heavy, as if tempting me to do just that.
I took a step back, not trusting myself, and dug in my pocket for the damp piece of notebook paper that was the only thing I had left for him. A lousy, wide-ruled, recycled piece of paper I’d scribbled down a string of lies on. Lies that felt blasphemous given everything we had, but things I had to write so he wouldn’t come looking for me the moment he came to. Lies that I knew would be just enough believable so he’d leave me alone and not search the world endless times over.
Because I knew if William suspected, even in the slightest, that I’d left to keep him safe from me, he’d somehow find me even if I sequestered myself to a dried-up, boarded-up well smack in the center of the Serengeti. So my lies had to be selfish requests, I had to make him believe I wanted out for me, and I knew—despite the pain it would cause him—he could never deny me anything.
I’d scratched down vile things, things that said I was tired of waiting for the Council, sick of him being gone all the time, weary of his family and not fitting in, and the worst of them all, that I didn’t love him anymore.
It’d taken a solid thirty minutes to write down that last sentence that included a handful of words that on their own were harmless, but when combined formed a wedge that promised to divide. Words that, when read, would cause pain, but that pain would one day melt away and there would be more than one set of arms eager to suck away the pain that rebellious girl from his past had left behind.
Years from now, William would be reclining in the body of another woman and wouldn’t be able to recall the way I smiled at him or the way my cheeks flushed when he touched me. Yes, there would be pain, but it would be short-lived for him. For me . . . that was another story.
I gazed hard at his face, photographing it into my mind. I dropped the letter on his nightstand, trying not to imagine his face when he read the last sentence. My last words to him, the last thing he’d have of me, words that basically told him I was in love with someone else.
Not able to resist it, I leaned down to feel his breath break across my face, inhaling him one last time.
“Goodbye,” I whispered beside his ear. “I won’t hurt you anymore.”
The tears weren’t flowing as they should have been, probably because I was more shell than soul now, but I didn’t mind because I was able to take my last look of him with perfect vision. The man who’d filled me with a love and desire I never dreamed possible and the man I’d always known wasn’t meant for me.
“Thank you . . . for everything,” I said, looking my last on him before turning and leaping out the window in the same second. Now I’d said good-bye, I needed to put as much space and time between us as I could.
I ducked into the shadows outside the house, preparing to launch down the gravel trail and away from this place that now felt like foreign soil.
“Maybe I should start teaching you the fine arts of espionage,” a voice commented behind me. “Rule number one—always be aware of your surroundings.”
I somehow stiffened and relaxed at the same time. “Patrick,” I whispered, “you’re alright.” I turned around to see him getting off the wooden swing hanging from the sprawling maple in the back yard. He walked towards me, adorned in blue scrub bottoms and a white undershirt. His sandals flopped his way towards me. “You mind telling me what you’re doing sneaking in and out of my brother’s bedroom at this hour?’
His eyebrows peaked and he stopped several feet in front of me. “Because, given his current state, I know you weren’t doing what you two are normally up to.” His impish grin didn’t quite explode with its normal force, plus his shoulders slumped a couple inches lower than normal.
“How are you feeling?” I whispered, not able to look him in the eyes. “Are you alright?”
“Never been better,” he joked. “Nothing like the zap of ten of John Townsend’s thugs to make you feel alive again.”
“That’s not funny,” I said, reprimanding him before glancing at the window behind me.
“He’s going to be alright too,” Patrick said, noting my stare, before chuckling. “Although William will now have a working knowledge of the phrase, ‘love hurts,’ don’t you think?”
My eyes narrowed into slits when I looked back at him. How was he able to make light of something so serious? Had William’s hand connected with my skin for another heartbeat or two, Patrick and I would be having a very different conversation.
“Sensitive, are we?” he said, raising his hands.
“You should be resting,” I said, changing the subject.
He snorted. “Sleep is for the weak. Besides, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re up to.”
I looked down, not able to look him in the eyes. “I’m leaving,” I mouthed, not making a sound.
“I’m not a lip-reader. You’re going to have to repeat that for me,” he said, taking a couple steps forward. “Perhaps turn it up a notch or two—”
“I’m leaving,” I interrupted, shifting my eyes to his.
“Where are you going?” he asked, not understanding.
I filled my lungs. “I’m leaving, Patrick. Away from here, for good.”
His eyebrows came together and he looked as if he hadn’t understood the words that had just come out of my mouth. A few more seconds went by, where I was both waiting and dreading for the realization of what I’d meant to click.
Another second ticked off and I saw it register on Patrick’s face. The curl of confusion in his eyebrows ironed out before they took a sharp slant downward and his eyes filled with ice. I repressed a shudder.
“You are
not
leaving,” he seethed through his teeth. “Not after everything he’s been through. Not if it’s up to me.”
“It’s not up to you,” I said, feeling lower than pond scum from the look he was giving me.
“Then why?’ he asked, his voice elevating. “Why now?”
“Because now is better than later, Patrick.” I knew each day I stayed with William, I risked his life. As it was, I’d waited too long to do this.
“You’re a coward,” he whispered, although the words entered me as if screamed. “I know why you’re doing this and you’re a coward for taking the easy way out.”
“There is no easy way out,” I argued. “Don’t you get it?”
“You’re a coward,” he repeated, annunciating every syllable. “Don’t you do this to him, Bryn. Don’t you hurt him,” he begged, sounding like the little brother he was, concerned first and foremost for the older brother he idolized.
“If I don’t go, I’ll only hurt him again. Could do so much worse than hurt him . . .”
“You listen to me—listen to me right now.” He lunged forward and grasped my arms. “I’m only going to say this once, so you better listen and listen good.” His fingers squeezed into my flesh with such strength I felt pain. He looked at me, his eyes pleading. “You can survive alone or you can
live
together. I know which option William would chose—has chosen,” he said, shaking me as if he wished he could shake some sense into me. “You have to make your choice.”
“I already have,” I whispered, turning away, hoping he’d leave me alone with the repercussions of my impossible decision.
“Coward,” he repeated, crossing his arms.
“Good-bye, Patrick,” I said over my shoulder, using three feeble words when I had at least a million I needed to say to him.
He cleared his throat and I heard a chord of popping—most likely the knuckles he had the habit of cracking whenever he was trying to diffuse stress. “Which way are you heading? I’ll give you a lift.”
I shook my head, Patrick’s offer dousing lemon on my gaping wound. “You don’t have to do that,” I said, not exactly looking forward to the journey on foot to my destination, but looking forward even less to being stuffed in a confined space with Patrick.
I needed a clean break—the sooner the better.
“I’m not doing it for you,” he said, the spite back in his tone, as he headed towards the garage. “I’m doing it for William.”
His back was to me, so he couldn’t have seen my confusion, but knowing me well enough, he explained, “Despite him waking up in a few days only to wish he hadn’t, he’ll still want to know you arrived safely to wherever the hell you have in mind.”
He disappeared into the garage and a moment later I heard an engine come to life—an engine I could have recognized in a chorus of a thousand others. Headlights came at me and despite Patrick’s likely wish given my actions, William’s vintage Bronco skidded to a stop an inch from me.
“Get in,” Patrick instructed, sticking his head out the window and raising his eyebrows in a way that let me know it wasn’t open for discussion.
“Can’t we take your car?” I asked, referring to the seven figure speedster I’d re-gifted to him as a thank you for saving me from John Townsend. He loved the Maserati and took every opportunity to drive it, even to the mailbox less than a mile down the road. Why couldn’t he drive it now? Although I’m sure it had something to do with torturing me.
“Don’t have the keys on me,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“How about my car?” I asked, knowing it would be the last time I’d see it. That was one companion, inanimate as it was, I’d forgotten to say good-bye to.
Patrick cringed. “I don’t drive Chevys. Ever. Cardinal rule of mine.” I was in the middle of rolling my eyes when he rested his hand over the car-horn. “Do you want me to wake my father?”
He knew how to get my attention. I jogged around the front and climbed in the cab, careful not to take a breath, knowing William’s scent permeated every inch of leather and scrap of metal.
I felt the leather slide beneath my legs and the memory of the last time William and I had been in the Bronco entered my consciousness. The leather had been heated and sticky from the friction of warmed skin sliding over it. I swallowed and closed my eyes, trying to shake the memory away. I thought I heard Patrick let out a hint of a chuckle.